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Alessia Cara

At The 60th GRAMMYs on Sunday, one of the night’s more poignant moments was delivered from a likely source: the live performance of “1-800-273-8255” by Logic, Alessia Cara and Khalid. If you caught the trio’s rendition of the single at the MTV Video Music Awards then you knew it would be a can’t-miss part of the show. Just as memorable was Logic’s sermon that he delivered following the piece; he later revealed the Recording Academy asked him to speak there.

Still the song and its success are rather unlikely. It began when Logic, born Sir Robert Bryson Hall II, noticed fans on tour and online reacting to his music and story in a way he didn’t expect: by saying it changed or saved their life. The reactions inspired Logic to head in to the studio and channel that energy in to a track that he would eventually entitle with the Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
“I never thought in a million years thought that that song would take me (to The GRAMMYs),” Logic said at The Garden following the ceremony’s conclusion Sunday night. “I love to make fun music, all types of hip-hop and even over trap beats.

“And I always thought it was something more like that, like a more fun or clubby or happy kind of vibe that would get me on that stage. So I can’t believe that I made a song that I never thought would ever do any of that, just from a place in my heart, strictly for my fans and anybody it could reach – and the fact that it actually reached them… it’s crazy.”

The track was up for “Song Of The Year” and lost to Bruno Mars’ “That’s What I Like” but to Logic, it didn’t seem to matter much.

“I mean, I won. That’s how I feel!” he told me and the rest of the Media Center at The Garden following his performance. “This is insane.”

The good news for Troye Sivan fans is that the singer has a busy year of touring the globe ahead, so chances are you’ll get to see him in your neck of the woods at some point.

The bad news is he seems nowhere near ready to begin work on the follow-up to his debut studio LP, “Blue Neighbourhood.” But of course, the album isn’t even a year old yet.

“I’m going to be honest with you, I haven’t started writing yet,” he told me on my radio show last week, prior to his Vevo concert with Alessia Cara and performance on “The Tonight Show.” “I mean I have so many ideas and think about new music every single day but for me I don’t think I can write an album on the road.”

This is a common conversation I have with singer/songwriters: some can easily churn on out tunes while touring but for the most part others find it at best very difficult. Sivan tossed his name in the latter category.

“I think I need to actually like, be somewhere stable and kind of just like chill out for a second,” he admitted. “I could throw something together but I don’t want to do that and I want my second album to be really, really special.”
Sivan even floated the idea of waiting until his touring is finished at the end of the year before setting up a base somewhere to work on his next project. Before then he’ll tour the States a second time and promote his new single, a remix of “Wild” that features the aforementioned Cara, a singer he said felt like his little sister.

“It’s weird because I’ve only met her like, maybe 10 times but I swear I mean it,” he insisted. “I really honestly feel super protective over her and yeah, I just think she’s super special.”

Cara is younger than the “Youth” singer but only by a year; the Canadian-born artist turned 20 earlier this month while Sivan hit the big 2-1 on June 5.

“I sort of had my crazy nights when I first turned 18,” Sivan, who was born in South Africa but raised in Australia, revealed. “So for me, (not being 21 in the United States) was more of just an inconvenience like, ‘Can I please just have a beer with my dinner?’”

Sivan would even try his luck on occasion.

“’Hey yeah, I’ll grab a Sapporo,’” he’d order, before looking away from the waiter. “And hope to God that they wouldn’t card me and they always did.

“I’d have to go through the whole thing where I’d have to put on this performance and pretend I left my wallet at home but yeah, now I don’t have to do any of that.”

And that’s good news too, but just for Sivan and whoever he’ll be breaking bread with in the States this year.

Day 2 of the broadcast Backstage at The 58th GRAMMYs is always more hectic but also a lot of fun: you’re set up, in a groove and a lot of artists are coming by – usually more so than the previous day. It was great meeting ‘Idol’ winner Nick Fradiani, BØRNS and actress/singer Hailee Steinfeld. I also loved catching up with our bud Alessia Cara and seeing Zendaya for the first time in a minute.

The second day of a backstage broadcast is usually a bit more hectic, and while the entire weekend was busier with our “Malibu Mansion Live” event, Saturday was no different from previous day two experiences. Notables that I spoke with included Charlie Puth, Alessia Cara, Michael and Luke from 5 Seconds of Summer and Joe Jonas’ new band DNCE.

Justin Bieber and One Direction are both quite successful. If you’re a new artist, you would probably love to be mentioned in the same conversation as those artists.

With perhaps maybe one exception: sharing an album release date.

Alessia Cara, a soulful 19 year-old singer/songwriter who like Bieber hails from the Toronto, Canada-area, dropped her debut LP Know It All last Friday. In addition to it being “Friday The 13th,” it was also the day that Bieber and 1D released Purpose and Made In The A.M. respectively.

“I know! It was like, ‘Excellent date, guys! Thanks!’” Cara joked when I brought this up to her Monday. “I just try to see it as three great albums on the same date.”

Cara purchased and enjoys both; her and Bieber share a record label home in addition to the release date. The teenager is not only a fan of Bieber’s music; she is happy that he and other artists like The Weeknd and Drake are changing the perception of Canadian music.

“I feel like Canadians are such underdogs most of the time, especially in music at first,” Cara explained. “You would never think that you should go to Toronto or like, Ontario, to find artists. That was never the cool place to go to look for music.”
The aforementioned artists, along with Cara and Shawn Mendes are changing that. The Canadian teens have known each other for quite some time but met for the first time recently backstage at Taylor Swift’s 1989 World Tour; Mendes was a supporting act and Cara was tapped for a cameo to perform her hit “Here” with Taylor.

“(Mendes) was like one of the first people to ever tweet out anything of mine and it was before I was signed, before I had a song. He tweeted one of my covers,” she recalled. “It was two-ish years ago, and he always updates me on where my song is at (on the charts).”

The short answer to that update: high. The track has spent the past two weeks in the top 10 most played at pop radio nationally. But as Cara later told me, there can be one down side to the airplay.